Understanding the drought characteristics is critical for water resources management in water stressed countries such as India. Previous studies evaluating drought assessments over India considered precipitation (P) and potential evapotranspiration (PET) as drivers using standardized precipitation‐evapotranspiration index (SPEI). The suitability of actual evapotranspiration (AET), which accounts for both water and energy based evaporative demands, in drought characterization is limited. In this study, SPEI is restructured with AET to characterize the regional drought over water and energy limited regions as standardized precipitation actual evapotranspiration index (SPAEI). For this, AET estimated based on Budyko framework and remote sensing‐based AET data has been used. The original formulation of SPEI is limited toward capturing the seasonality present in P and PET. The SPEI is restructured to account for the water availability deficit in the drought assessment rather than the actual atmospheric water demand in a given period to capture the strong seasonality of rainfall. The study compared the drought characteristics with both PET and AET for various meteorological homogeneous zones of India, which are characterized as water‐limited (Central, North, West, South, and Jammu and Kashmir, J&K) and energy‐limited (Northeast and Northeast hills) zones. Overall, the proposed new drought index based on AET can be promising toward drought intensity, extreme drought areal extents, shorter‐time scale drought frequencies, and longer‐time scale drought durations for water‐limited zones. The proposed drought indices based on AET can be robust for the drought assessment under consideration of water energy along with land and vegetation variability and can provide more insights for water‐limited regions.

中文翻译：

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利用潜在的和实际的蒸散特征表征印度水和能源有限区域的区域干旱

了解干旱特征对于印度等缺水国家的水资源管理至关重要。先前评估印度干旱评估的研究使用标准的降水-蒸散指数（SPEI）将降水（P）和潜在的蒸散量（PET）作为驱动因素。在干旱表征中，考虑了基于水和能量的蒸发需求的实际蒸散量（AET）的适用性受到限制。在这项研究中，用AET对SPEI进行了重组，以将水和能源有限区域的区域干旱特征化为标准化的降水实际蒸散指数（SPAEI）。为此，使用了基于Budyko框架和基于遥感的AET数据估算的AET。SPEI的原始配方仅限于捕获P和PET中存在的季节性。对SPEI进行了重组，以考虑干旱评估中的水短缺状况，而不是给定时期内的实际大气需水量，以捕捉强降雨季节。该研究比较了印度各种气象均质区的干旱特征，其中PET和AET均表现为干旱（中央，北部，西部，南部，查mu和克什米尔，J＆K）和能量受限（东北和东北）丘陵地带）。总体而言，拟议的基于AET的新干旱指数有望在缺水地区实现干旱强度，极端干旱程度，较短时间尺度的干旱频率和较长时间尺度的干旱持续时间。